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I also bought it way back when it first came out. Pretty sure there's a system to transfer the old copy over to steam/desura. Give them an email with your details and I'm sure they will help you.
They just ramped it up a bit more, harder to survive now. Few more tweaks and they could actually make this really hard which is a good thing. Excuse the quality steam screenshot this one:
I've just picked this up on Kinguin for about £4 - hope you can play with a controller?!
Most impressed with how it looks there! Textures and models have come a hell of a long way since I last played.
Sorry I missed your question before, I did try a few times online but as you say the servers were completely looted clean of everything on the ones I tried so I gave up